Dear Tom and Ray:

I have a 1988 Lincoln Town Car with 75,000 miles on it. I used your suggestion of several months ago for separating the rusty wheels from the drums. Loosening the lug nuts slightly and hitting the brakes hard while driving slowly did the trick. Now for the hard part; trying to remove the rusty rear drums. I tried rust solvents, and slide bar puller with no luck. My mechanic even tried heating them up with a torch and whacking them with a sledge hammer. Any other suggestions? -- Don

Tom: Gee, Don, you've tried all of our usual techniques -- although we usually start with the sledge hammer and save the rust solvents for later.

Ray: My guess is that your brake shoes have worn grooves into the drums. It's obvious that you haven't replaced the shoes since Dukakis lost to George Bush. And since they wore out years ago, every time you step on the brakes, your rear brake shoes carve a little more of a "Panama canal" into your drums. And because the shoes are now wedged into the drums, you can't pull the drums off.

Tom: What you have to do is completely unadjust the rear brakes. Normally, you want the shoes to be within a nose hair of the drums, so you don't have to move the brake pedal very far before there's contact. But now what you want to do is the opposite. You want to get those shoes as far away from the drums as possible, in hopes of getting the shoes out of the groove. You may have to use heat as well to free the shoes, but once you do, you should be able to force off the drums.

Ray: If that doesn't work, you can try chiseling the hold-down pins off the backing plate. They're part of what is holding the shoes on, and once they're removed and the shoes and drums may be able to come off in one piece...with springs flying, rust scattering, and brake dust in your face.

Tom: If all of that fails, you can always go for the "axle-ectomy," where the rear axle is actually cut off to free the drums. But I've only had to do that once in the last 20 years, so I suspect one of these other approaches is going to bear fruit -- or at least metal.

How can you tell if a used car is in good condition -- or even OK, for that matter? Find out by ordering Tom and Ray's pamphlet "How to Buy a Great Used Car: Things That Detroit and Tokyo Don't Want You to Know." Send $3 and a stamped (55 cents), self-addressed, No. 10 envelope to Used Car, PO Box 536475, Orlando, FL 32853-6475.

© 1996 by Tom and Ray Magliozzi and Doug Berman Distributed by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

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